The Effectiveness of Communication-Oriented Pronunciation Instruction and Students' Perception

Abstract

The purpose of this study is intended to empirically examine whether or not communication-oriented pronunciation teaching affects the English segmental and suprasegmental pronunciation improvements of Korean college learners, as well as their English speaking ability. The students who participated in this study were 26 college students, all of whom were taking an English pronunciation clinic course at a local university. Three types of pre and post-tests were conducted to find out how communication-oriented pronunciation teaching influenced the learners’ pronunciation. Namely, tests of consonant and vowel sound recognition, reading aloud tests, and picture description tests.<br/>First, a total of 40 questions were given as pre-and post-pronunciation recognition evaluations to find out how accurately the students perceived the sounds of consonants and vowels. In addition, the students’ voices were recorded as they read dialogue readings both before and after the evaluation, in order to examine the degree of improvement of the segmental and suprasegmental features. Finally, the students were asked to describe certain pictures before and after the course to see if there were any beneficial effects regarding their pronunciation of English.<br/>The findings showed that communication-oriented activities led to significant improvements, but only on the consonant recognition tests, not on the tests with vowels. The results from the reading aloud tests also demonstrated that the communication-oriented activities helped students to improve suprasegmental elements, such as stress, intonation, and rhythm. Moreover, there was a significant improvement in the speaking ability of the students, from which I can infer that communication-oriented activities have a positive effect on improving the students’ suprasegmentals, as well as their speaking ability.